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Anatomy and Neurochemistry of Major Psychiatric Illnesses

A longstanding focus of our laboratory is examining how pathways through the amygdala are positioned to mediate
symptomatology of severe mental illnesses. Over the last decade, multiple human neuroimaging studies show that amygdala
dysfunction—its structure, function, or both—is a component of many psychiatric syndromes. Broadly speaking, this is not
surprising since the amygdala has long been known to code the salience of external experience. However, the amygdala
participates in many diverse and specific functions including fear conditioning and extinction, safety signaling, recognition
of emotion in facial expression, and affective responses to primary rewards and punishments. Many of these functions have
seemingly opposing goals, raising the question of whether discrete or similar amygdala subregions or cell groups participate
in recognizing safety versus reward, or fear learning and extinction. Moreover, the amygdala is a highly heterogeneous
structure whose various nuclei have significant differences in structure and connectivity among animal species. Ongoing
studies in our laboratory use nonhuman primate models to identify how input/output pathway through the amygdala converge
and segegrate in order to understand how various types of emotional coding might take place in the human. Because many
psychiatric symptoms are brought about by stressful life experiences, we work n collaboration with other nonhuman primate
groups, to examine the molecular and cellular features of specific amygdala circuits and subcircuits that are especially
important in stress responses. Our work is important in helping to design and interpret outcomes of human neuroimaging work,
and we also work with several groups studying manifestations of psychiatric disease in humans.

A new area of study in our laboratory involves models of stress in adolescent rats. Since circuit formation in the amygdala
is ongoing during childhood and adolescence, we have several studies investigating the roles of stress on typical amygdala
development, and correlated behavioral outcomes.

A word to Undergraduates

We love having undergraduates…

But we are a very small laboratory! We take only 1-2 undergraduates each semester for Independent study (NSC 395), and 1-2 each summer for internship. If you are interested: contact us early and have one name of a faculty member for a reference.

Grades are based on your initiative in researching background on your topic, ability to maintain steady, independent work once you are trained, and a paper documenting and discussing your work at the end of the semester. Summer interns create a poster or oral presentation by summer’s end.